Wings
by Raven Ehtar
Summary: Castiel had withstood the fires of Hell for him, he could stand this. One-shot. Destiel.


_**A/N:**__ This one was inspired by a discussion and some fanart on tumblr. I completely and totally blame that website for the number of painful fics I keep coming up with for this fandom. (Probably explains why I haven't been on there in like two weeks.)_

_**Betas:**__ SkyTurtle_

_**Disclaimer:**__ I do not own __Supernatural,__ nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story._

…

Wings

Raven Ehtar

…

He'd always wondered what they looked like. Sure, on their first meeting all those years ago Dean had almost seen them, the great sweeping shadows of two enormous wings cast against the wooden planks of the shed. Even just as shadows, he had gotten a sense of their size and their strength.

But what color were they? Were Castiel's wings well groomed or were they scruffy like his vessel? Were the individual feathers solid or patterned, glossy or soft?

_They shimmered brightly in the darkness, lit with an inner luminescence._

Angels definitely had wings. If seeing their shadows weren't enough, then practically every scrap of lore he had ever read on them depicted them as having the feathery appendages. Usually they were pure white and arced slightly above the shoulders when folded. Spread out they never looked big enough for actual flight. Art could never seem to get across the sense of strength, of massive _power_ in those limbs, hidden beneath the feathers. It never managed to convey that they were things of bone and muscle and sinew, and that even if they were relatively delicate, what was _relatively_ delicate for an angel?

_The weight of them… he hadn't expected that. By themselves, they weighed approximately the same as the man they were attached to._

And then there was the matter of how they acted. Dean often found himself wondering at the natural behavior of Cass's wings. Unbeknownst – he hoped – to Sam or anyone else, Dean had taken to watching birds and how they moved while not in flight. In his mind, he'd assigned quite a few possible unconscious fidgets and gestures that Cass might make with his wings, to go with each of his expressions and when he spoke. He was normally fairly stoic, but the invisible motions Dean saw in his mind gave the angel much more depth of expression.

_Fluttering, shivering… the only thing Dean had failed to imagine was the sound they would make as they moved. Like the pages of a book being flipped through._

One time, after a hunt and he was more than a little drunk, he'd told Castiel a little about his thoughts on the wings he had never seen. At first the angel had looked surprised, and then he'd smiled, looked down as though talking about his wings embarrassed him. He remembered wondering then, what were the social conventions around a pair of wings? _Had_ he embarrassed Cass by talking about them?

But if he had, Cass never said as much, never admonished him for his curiosity. In fact he'd sat down and told Dean a little about his wings. What he remembered the most from that late night conversation fuelled by booze, was that the wings were forever there, just as real as the rest of him, and that sometimes they came close to touching either Sam or Dean, just brushing past them.

He sometimes wondered after that if the breezes he felt were just the wind, or an errant angel's wing coming too close.

_He felt them now. The gusts thrown up by beating wings washed over him, a personal tempest._

What did they feel like? Would they be like a bird's feathers, or would there be something different to an angel's feathers?

_Ash soft, they trailed over Dean's bare skin. Soft and…_

He knew he was never likely to _see_ an angel's wings, in the same way he would never see an angel's true form. It was too much for almost any human to handle.

_Soft and warm._

The closest he would ever see would be Raphael's electricity wings, the shadows they cast, or the burnt out scars left behind by a dying angel.

_Hot._

If that was how he would ever see them…

_Burning._

… then Dean could do without seeing Castiel's.

_When an angel died, their wings left their marks, black, burnt out silhouettes on whatever surface they were against at the time. For just a moment before the final flare out, they became visible. _

_Dean didn't see them. All he saw was Cass falling to the ground. _

_It was a clumsy catch, doing himself more harm than Cass any good. The angel looked up at him, confused, from the silver hilt of an angel's sword stuck through his breastbone, the light of grace mixing with the red of blood. _

_Dean tried to smile, to tell him that everything was alright._

_They both knew it wasn't._

_As the light faded from Cass's eyes, it flared to life in his wings, and all Dean could do was hold on._

_Feathers burned all around him, embers of heat whipped at his hands, his face. His clothes and his hair burned, and then so did his flesh. Sam was screaming at him, trying to pull him away, but Dean wouldn't let go._

_Castiel had withstood the fires of Hell for him, he could stand this._

_Except that Castiel had been able to save him. Dean was unable, in the end, to do the same for him. _

_Now, if he ever wanted to see what an angel's wings looked like, all he had to do was look in a mirror. Like the handprint nearly faded from his shoulder, a gentle faded scar that told of a soul saved, this angry red mark across arms and ribs was a reminder of a friend lost._

_Marked with the wings of an angel._

…

_**A/N2:**__ Thanks for reading, everybody!_


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